Rebekah Ladan Sturdey, 56, admitted preventing 'lawful and decent burial' of her husband Geoffrey at a Ceredigion farm to claim £77,000 in benefits

A widow who covered up her husband’s death for nearly five years by burying his body at a West Wales communal farm where she was involved in a religious sect so she and a friend could carry on claiming £77,000 of his benefits has been jailed for 20 months by a judge at Swansea Crown Court today.

Rebekah Ladan Sturdey, 56, admitted preventing the “lawful and decent burial” of her husband Geoffrey at the farm, Beth Berith in Tregaron, Ceredigion, after he died of natural causes there in October 2008 aged 60.

She also admitted benefit fraud.

Huw Rees, prosecuting at Swansea Crown Court today said Mrs Sturdey and co-defendant Boqer-Ore Adie, 43, who also admitted preventing lawful burial and benefit fraud and who was also jailed for 20 months today, told the authorities who inquired about Mr Sturdey’s whereabouts he had “gone travelling in Europe”.

Carmel Adie, 25, another who lived at the farm, was given a nine-month jail sentence suspended for a year with 150 hours unpaid work after admitting preventing Mr Sturdey’s lawful burial.

Carmel Adie

The court heard Mr Sturdey, his wife, Boqer-Ore Adie, Carmel Adie and others were involved at the farm in a “hybrid” religious sect based on judaism and the Old Testament with prosecutor Mr Rees announcing it was “not in the public interest” for the varying relationships between those at the farm to be made public.

The court heard the sect members, who called Mr Sturdey Shamar (hebrew for “keeper” or “guardian”), expected Jesus to return to earth seven days after his death.

Mr Rees said: “Before his death he chose his own burial plot from where he expected to be raised from the dead. They expected Jesus’s return to Earth seven days after he died.”

Mr Sturdey’s body was eventually found by Dyfed-Powys Police on the farm in 2013 following an extensive £20,000 search involving aerial photographs, ground penetrating radar and forensic archaeology, buried near a polytunnel on the farm.

Around £6,000 in cash was also discovered.

Mr Rees said Boqer-Ore Adie and Rebekah Sturdey claimed a total of £77,318.73 in disability living, pension credit and other benefits for Mr Sturdey, Rebekah Sturday claiming she got £57,000 of the money.

The court heard in November 2010, more than two years after Mr Sturdey’s death, Boqer-Ore Adie purchased for those living at the farm around £100,000 in gold sovereigns with a consignment worth £16,000 being paid for in £20 notes.

Mr Rees said a pathologist could find no injuries on Mr Sturdey’s body and sentencing judge Paul Thomas said he accepted those living at the farm had buried Mr Sturdey in accordance with his wishes and had looked after him in his “last days”.

He said: “You Boger-Ore Adie and you Rebeka Ladan Sturdey took advantage of the sad death of Mr Sturdey to conceal the fact that he had passed away to thereby claim benefits to which you were not entitled.

“Whatever the initial motive, it gave you the opportunity to enrich yourselves at the expense of the rest of us.”

Judge Thomas said the two women amassed a considerable amount of gold and cash and added what they did was “a calculated fraud”.

He also said it was important those who by-passed the coroner and proper registration following deaths were “deterred” from doing so because the role of the coroner was important in establishing if any foul play was present though he accepted no foul play was present in Mr Sturdey’s death.

Department of Work and Pensions fraud manager Delmie Jones said: “This prosecution is the result of the diligence of our investigators, who discovered the initial fraud that led to the arrest of these women.

“Working in partnership with the police, the full extent of their crimes have now been uncovered.

“It just goes to show the level of commitment our teams have in investigating all allegations of benefit fraud, and in making sure criminals like these are brought to justice.”

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